Lanark_ a life in 4 books - Alasdair Gray [78]
Everyone but Thaw sniggered. Someone nudged him and said,“What do you think of her, moon-man?”
“Her jaw’s too ape-like for me.”
“Is it? All right. But I wouldnae give her back if I got her in a present. Does anyone know her name?
“I do. It’s Kate Caldwell.”
Things improved in the afternoon for they had English and the teacher was a young man with a comforting likeness to the film comedian Bob Hope. Without any introductory speech he said, “Today is the last day for handing in contributions for the school magazine. I’ll give you paper and you can try to write something for it. It can be prose or poetry, serious or comic, an invented story or something that really happened. It doesn’t matter if the result isn’t up to much, but maybe one or two of you will get something accepted.” Thaw leaned over the paper, elated thoughts flowing through his head. His heart began to beat faster and he started writing. He quickly filled two sheets of foolscap then copied the result out carefully, checking the hard words with a dictionary. The teacher collected the papers and the bell rang for the next lesson.
Next day the class had geometry. The Maths teacher talked lucidly and drew clear diagrams on the blackboard, and Thaw gazed at her, trying by intensity of expression to make up for inability to understand. A girl came in and said, “Please, miss, Mister Meikle wants tae see Duncan Thaw in room fifty-four.”
As she led him across the playground to the wooden annexe,
Thaw said, “Who’s Mr. Meikle?”
“Head English teacher.”
“What does he want me for?”
“How should I know?”
In room fifty-four a saturnine man in an academic gown leaned on a desk overlooking empty rows of desks. He turned toward Thaw a face that was long, lined and triangular under the oval of a balding skull. He had a small black moustache and ironical eyebrows. Lifting two sheets of foolscap from his desk he said,
“You wrote this?”
“Yes sir.”
“What gave you the idea?”
“Nothing, sir.”
“Hm. I suppose you read a lot?”
“Quite a lot.”
“What are you reading just now?”
“A play called The Dynasts.”
“Hardy’s Dynasts?”
“I forget who wrote it. I got it out of the library.” “What do you think of it?”
“I think the choruses are a bit boring but I like the scenic directions. I like the retreat from Moscow, with the bodies of the soldiers baked by fire in front and frozen stiff behind. And I like the view of Europe down through the clouds, looking like a sick man with the Alps for his backbone.”
“Do you do any writing at home?”
“Oh yes, sir.”
“Are you at work on anything just now?”
“Yes. I’m trying to write about this boy who can hear colours.”
“Hear colours?”
“Yes sir. When he sees a fire burning each flame makes a noise like a fiddle playing a jig, and some nights he’s kept awake by the full moon screaming, and he hears the sun rise through an orange dawn like trumpets blowing. The bother is that most colours round about him make horrible noises—orange and green buses, for instance, traffic lights and advertisements and things.”
“You don’t hear colours yourself, do you?” said the teacher, looking at Thaw peculiarly.
“Oh no,” said Thaw, smiling. “I got the idea from a note Edgar Allan Poe wrote to one of his poems. He said he sometimes thought he could hear the dusk creeping over the land like the tolling of a bell.”
“I see. Well, Duncan, the school magazine is rather short of worthwhile contributions this year. Do you think you could write something more for us? Along slightly different lines?”
“Oh yes.”
“Don’t write about the boy who hears colours. It’s a good idea—perhaps too good for a school magazine. Write about something more commonplace. How soon could you manage it?”
“Tomorrow, sir.”
“The day after will do.”
“I’ll bring it in tomorrow.”
Mr. Meikle tapped his teeth with a pencil end, then said, “We have a debating society in the school every second Wednesday evening. You should come to it. You may have something to say.”
Thaw ran leaping back across the empty playground. Outside the maths room he paused, took the grin from